Denver and the West

Colorado wildfires strain, showcase local TV news crews

1st Sgt John Screiber, left, helps put out fire while Sgt David Meggison, right, not pictured, puts water on hotspots on property along Winchester Road north of Hodgen Road in the midst of the Black Forest fire on June 13, 2013. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa told a Thursday morning Black Forest fire news conference that law enforcement and safety experts learned many lessons from last year's Waldo Canyon fire. On the media side, there were lessons learned and applied as well.

One is, disregard the inevitable minority of vocal viewers who would rather have golf or ice hockey or "Ellen" on the screen during a local crisis. Denver TV stations dutifully cleared hours of network news and entertainment programming in order to bring dramatic coverage of the wildfires to area viewers.

Another is, tiptoe as close to the action as possible without directly disobeying officials. Marshall Zelinger of 7News proved effective at documenting, live, where he was standing in dicey instances so there was no mistake.

Also, while TV news often paints with a broad brush, the little details matter. "Evacuation area boundaries, 'mandatory' versus 'standby' evacuation, wind direction and wind speed, humidity levels ... these details are literally a matter of life and death for our viewers," CBS4 news director Tim Wieland said.

Another lesson was the key role of the Internet: significant resources were devoted to the stations' websites and Twitter feeds to keep data on the dynamic situation up to date.

Local TV's best live standup ad- libber, Kyle Clark of 9News, made it look easy. But a number of on-air personnel showed the stress of working in difficult conditions, trying to coordinate with a camera operator while pointing at dangerous sites in the distance and keeping track of facts in complete sentences.

Some of the most striking maps were overlaid on NASA satellite images from space.

Closer to earth, the value of hyper-local reporting was evident as news outlets plotted block-by-block which homes were lost, and tweeted/posted the findings. Stunning footage from a camera mounted on a fire hose, seen on 7News, gave viewers a fire-crew-eye view.

On Day 3 of the fire coverage, a day that also strained newsrooms to cover a home explosion in Westminster, CBS4's Wieland tweeted the exchange he had in requesting that the program director clear time for a special 4 p.m. broadcast.

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